BBM spotted on Lumia 630 leaked screenshot

Although BlackBerry itself promised back in February [2014] that a version of BBM [BlackBerry Messenger] for the Windows Phone OS would become available “as a free download for Windows Phone users this Summer,” it’s now June. And no sign of it quite yet. But there’s good news. A teaser for Nokia’s Lumia 630 has leaked out. And guess what? One of the screen shots clearly shows that BBM will be pre-loaded in the ‘Social’ sector of the smartphone’s UI. The important bit here is that the Lumia 630 is very definitely a Windows Phone 8.1 (WP8) handset so existing WP7/8 users shouldn’t have too long to wait for a generic version of the app. Especially since all the indications are that the Nokia 630 will ship very soon.

We found a copy of the leaked Nokia 630 teaser on Android Callshere. But the site speculates that the initial generic version for Windows Phone won’t have the same specification of the Android, iOS and BlackBerry versions.

Now GoMo News can well believe that the WP7/8 version won’t support BBM Voice on release. But no initial support for BBM Channels?

Well, we’d argue that the complete opposite is probably true. BlackBerry has waited too long to release a Windows Phone version to then not include BBM Channels.

We’d suggest that BBM enthusiasts who are desperate to install the app on their Windows Phone handsets to keep checking on BBM.com here.

We’ve learnt from bitter experience with the launch of the BlackBerry Z3 in Indonesia, that signing up for email news alerts with BlackBerry simply doesn’t work.

Incidentally, despite reports that an upgrade to the BB10 mobile OS would become available in May, GoMo News‘ own Q5 didn’t get version 10.2.1.2941 for download until a few days ago [June 10th 2014].

Perhaps because our own MNO [Mobile Network Operator], Orange/EE, was being extra cautious?

About Tony Dennis

Tony is currently Editor of GoMobile News. He's a veteran telecoms journalist who has previously worked for major printed and online titles. Follow him on Twitter @GoMoTweet.